Two television journalists were killed during live broadcasts in Virginia, shot by a suspect who was a former employee of the TV station and who called himself "powder keg" of anger over what he saw as racial discrimination at work and elsewhere in United States.

Later, the man who shot the two journalists on live TV in the US state of Virginia has died after shooting himself.

Vester Lee Flanagan 41 who is an African American, was an ex-employee of the WDBJ7 TV known professionally as Bryce Williams.

Two of its reporters Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were killed some seven hours earlier during an interview in the town of Moneta.

The White House has urged Congress to rapidly pass gun control laws in the wake of this latest shooting in the US.

The attack was intended to avenge the Charleston shootings earlier this year - a suspected hate crime in which a white gunman killed 9 parishioners at an African-American church.